Thursday, October 30, 2014

Thrift Style/Throwback Thursday - Ghosts of Halloween Past

I'm doing today's Thrift Style Thursday theme of Halloween costumes in Throwback fashion today.  I snagged a few pictures of Baby Bethie from back in the day and then I have a few of us in more recent years as well to share.  So let's fire up the wayback machine!

When I was young, I was lucky to have a grandmother who sewed and she helped us make my costume just about every year when I was growing up.  I remember being so excited each year to go to the fabric store and pick out a pattern for my costume!

First up here we have my first Halloween - my mom kept it simple and put bunny ears on a hat.  I decided when I was four that I wanted to revisit the bunny concept, so the below picture is me as a bunny again.  
 I think I was pretty dang cute - wonder where Oliver gets it?

Next up my second and third grade years.  In second grade I decided to be a scarecrow and in third grade I was Raggedy Ann.  What was awesome about these costumes is that we were able to recycle them later on and use pieces of them for various costumes needed for our church show each year, I remember we lengthened the Raggedy Ann dress to be a dress for me to sing the Wells Fargo Wagon from the Music Man in the show one year.


I dressed up each year through high school.  I more or less stopped trick or treating around sixth or seventh grade though.  I went out with friends at a party once in high school but that was about it.  Sadly I don't have the greatest pictures to share of my high school costumes.  One year Nate and I dressed up as a magician and his rabbit and I remember going on a wild goose chase the day before Halloween to every thrift store in town trying to find him a magician's hat!  I can't find the only good picture I have of us from that year though!

Believe it or not in college I took a break from dressing up for Halloween.  I'm not even sure why, I know my sorority had events and what not.  I do remember going with my sorority sisters to volunteer at these awesome haunted caves they used to have over in St. Paul.  We got to dress up and be part of the scare crew.  I had the best spot to hide one year and would jump out at people from behind this dark tree and scream at the top of my lungs.  It was fun seeing the reactions.  As someone who's easily startled it is oddly cathartic to startle other people!

Anyway, I didn't really do much dressing up for Halloween again until after Nate and I were married and I'm pretty proud of the costumes I've managed to pull together as an adult.  The year after we got married I decided to dress up as Rainbow Brite.  Other than buying a shirt at Target and a wig at Party City, every item I bought for this costume came from the thrift store and I was super excited by how it turned out.


The following year we kept it extremely simple and did Mario and Luigi from Super Mario Bros.  Nate was Mario and I was Luigi though I think it should have been the other way around seeing as Luigi is supposed to be taller than Mario!  This was a super simple one to put together, we borrowed overalls from my dad for Nate, I had some from past costume needs as well and then Nate sewed us some very simple hats out of felt.


Finally, the last time we truly dressed up was in 2010.  We went to our local roller derby with some friends and decided to dress up for the occasion.  It was a last minute choice, but we took a suggestion from a Facebook friend and dressed up as garden gnomes.  I thrifted a dress and apron and Nate sewed us hats and a tunic (yes Nate sews and I don't, we're weird I guess!).  I also, um, bulked up the girls if you get my drift, added some flowers and boom.  We kind of modeled ourselves after characters from a show we enjoyed as children called David the Gnome.



And then we kind of took a break from dressing up again for the last several years.  We just hadn't had a chance.  Now that we have Oliver we are going to dress up as a family.  I am going to keep you all in suspense for now though - you'll have to check back here, probably on Saturday, to see just what we do!  I will give you a hint, we will be recycling an element from one of the pictures above!
What was your favorite Halloween costume?  Check out the other Thrift Style Thursday peeps at their blogs below for other Halloween fun!

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